It’s fine to drink soup regularly, but you can’t avoid eating meat either

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Many people have the habit of making various soups; they are delicious and offer many health benefits. This habit is particularly common in the south. It’s true that drinking soup is good for health, but many people think that the meat used in making soups lacks nutrients, so they only drink the soup – which is incorrect. Moreover, the ingredients used for making soup shouldn’t be chosen arbitrarily either. 　　\"Yu Ping Feng San Tang\" tops the list for preventing colds. Yang Longfei, a pharmaceutical researcher at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine: Can decoctions also function as immunoglobulins? The answer is correct. A traditional Chinese medicine formula, Yu Ping Feng San Tang, is made by using Saposhnikovia, Astragalus, and Atractylodes in a ratio of 1:2:2, along with a few jujubes, to create a decoction for consumption. It is an effective remedy for preventing infectious diseases such as colds, and it is known as the \"immunoglobulin\" of traditional Chinese medicine. It is currently early autumn, so it’s advisable to consume this decoction in larger amounts. 　　Moreover, there is a right time to drink soup; for example, if you already have a cold, your spleen and stomach are usually weaker at that time. Warm tonic soups tend to be greasy, which can actually worsen the cold and hinder recovery, so it’s better not to drink them. Instead, you can consume some easily digestible porridge. Also, if women drink some warm, nourishing soups before their periods, it may lead to excessive menstrual flow and affect their health. 　　When it comes to replenishing qi, choose yam instead of ginseng. Lin Yin, head of the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine Health Preservation and Rehabilitation at the School of Basic Medicine of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, says that replenishing qi is the reason why many people drink soups; they even spend money on precious herbs like ginseng. In fact, not every herb can be added to soups. For example, ginseng, which is often used to replenish qi, cannot be considered an ordinary food; it should be used under the guidance of a professional traditional Chinese medicine doctor. It is better to choose milder foods that help replenish qi, such as Chinese yam. **The Ministry of Health has listed 87 herbs that can be used as food sources, and these are relatively safer. 　　Additionally, it should be noted that if you just want to try something new and drink soup, but if you aim to gain nutrients, you still need to eat meat. Many people believe that after simmering ingredients in soup, most of the nutrients in them dissolve into the soup, so drinking only the soup is sufficient to obtain those nutrients; this is completely a misconception. In fact, drinking soup is just about tasting umami, while eating meat is what provides nutrients. 　　　　Zhang Ye, head of the Nutrition Department at the 309 Hospital of the People’s Liberation Army: For ordinary people who want to use soup as a means of nourishment, they can follow the recipe for stewed chicken and mushrooms from the Northeast region. Buy a chicken, remove the legs, wings, and the thick meat from the chest and abdomen, leaving only the skeleton. Place it in a clay pot and simmer it over low heat. Add some mushrooms; no other seasonings are needed. If you want to enhance the flavor, add some ham slices. Such soup is not only delicious but also not too greasy; it helps to dissolve the fat-soluble nutrients in the mushrooms. Moreover, since mushrooms have a cool nature while chicken has a warm nature, together they make an ideal choice for ordinary people looking to replenish their nutrients in a gentle way. 　　Furthermore, I fully agree with the importance of drinking soup and eating meat. In the past, I even conducted experiments on this topic and found that no matter how long the soup is cooked, only a small portion of the nutrients from the ingredients dissolve into the soup; most of them remain in the food itself. Drinking only soup without eating meat does not provide much nutritional benefit.